How Parents, Caregivers Can Support Building Resilience in Children

By Ashley Pagenkopf, MS, CCLS, Child Life Specialist at Cook Children's

It’s been said often, especially in health care – kids are resilient. It's true that kids can completely surprise adults with how well they cope and weather the storms of life. However, resiliency in children is not universal, and we cannot expect our children to be resilient innately. Resiliency must be taught and fostered.  

From kids getting ready to attend kindergarten, to teenagers on the cusp of adulthood have all survived a pandemic. Parents and teachers could easily and quickly tell you that not all kids are resilient. It is reported that emergency room visits due to mental health concerns increased by 24% for children 5-11 years old and even more for children 12-18 years old from March 2020 to October 2020. In early 2021, suicide attempts more than doubled in girls from two years prior, according to MedStar. Given social media and cyberbullying in conjunction with a pandemic and economic crisis, we can be sure that our children are not innately resilient.

While children can often appear to be coping more effectively than adults, we cannot ignore the increase in children who are in mental health crises. Many areas where children struggle with resilience could be helped by simply limiting their exposure. We are asking our children to live and function outside their developmental ability to understand the world they are being exposed to. It is no wonder that children are struggling. 

So before diving into resilience, consider your child’s age and developmental abilities and what they are currently being exposed to. If there is a gap, consider narrowing the gap by ensuring that your child is involved in developmentally appropriate activities and is exposed to developmentally appropriate media and material. 

Resilience can be defined as children’s ability to thrive when faced with challenges, according to the American Psychological Association. Challenges for kids can range from starting a new school or having a friend move away to bullying and harmful exposure on social media. Parents should be aware of the many things that may be causing a child stress or testing their resilience. The goal would be for children to quickly return to their baseline following any kind of stressful or challenging experience.

All my girls have had a school year that included heavy challenges. Following the pandemic and upon just returning to school in person, one of my daughter’s teachers went out on maternity leave. While this was so exciting and something to be celebrated, my daughter did not handle to the change to a new teacher well at all especially following such an uncertain time. It resulted in some very difficult evenings. 

Now another daughter has experienced a leave-of-absence for her teacher, and it became very difficult for her to cope with the constant changes in her classroom each day due to not having a long-term substitute. While these challenges may seem simple to adults, the change in daily routines, the anxiety of getting to know someone new, and the unmet expectations along with other stressors test our children’s resiliency. 

There are so many things that children experience that could be breaking their resiliency. As parents and caregivers, it is our job to help build their resiliency. The American Psychological Association says, “Building resilience—the ability to adapt well to adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress—can help our children manage stress and feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.”

It may surprise you that there are some very simple ways to help children build their resiliency.

1. Perceived control is a large part of resiliency. Offering children opportunities to increase their perceived control will help to build their resiliency. Perceived control is a child’s belief in their ability to control events or situations. If a child has high perceived control, they believe that their response to a situation or event matters to the overall feeling of that experience. For example, a child who spills a glass of milk on the floor with low perceived control may just sit down and cry or run away from the spilled milk. The child with higher perceived control will grab the paper towels and start to clean up the milk because they believe they can, and they believe it will make it better. So, as parents and caregivers, we can grow children’s perceived control by offering choices and giving them independence. This can be difficult for adults who love to be in control. However, it is important that children recognize that they can move through a challenge based on their response or actions to that challenge. The more opportunities we provide for our children to be challenged and then be successful, we will be giving them the opportunity to grow their perceived control. Playing sports, learning a new instrument, or cooking a meal are all places that may present challenges that a child could learn how to respond to that challenge and feel successful.
2. Maintaining structure and routine will help to grow resiliency for your child. Maintaining structure will show children how to prioritize and manage their time and circumstances so that when life inevitably throws them a curveball, they know how to adapt and adjust. When children are constantly out of routine without an opportunity to get a handle on anything, they are adapting so often that they are not able to learn follow-through, time management, or how to emotionally cope with the constant change. Structure and routine create a safe space to learn to feel confident in completing tasks, making plans, and managing emotions. This safe space of routine will also allow children to be successful which builds their confidence. This will help them to quickly return to their baseline when something is challenging.
3. A strong community and/or supportive adult relationships are also paramount to building resiliency. This cannot be said enough. A strong relationship with an adult will provide a sense of strength to any child to let them know they are not alone in whatever challenges they face. No one wants to feel alone while feeling overwhelmed. Spending time with your child, asking intentional questions, and really listening will provide a space for resilience to grow. When a child can hear how parents or caregivers have handled difficult situations and circumstances, it will help to guide how they choose to respond. Outside of close relationships with adults (coaches, teachers, parents, neighbors, etc.), it is important for your children to feel a part of a community and something bigger than themselves. This may be a place where faith is also mobilized like within a church or other community. By partnering with others who are like-minded and will offer hope and perspective in difficult situations, resiliency is given a chance to grow.  Relationships grow resiliency in every way. We were made to do this life together.

Resiliency can be grown. We can help our children to become more resilient, and adults can also work to become more resilient. We want children to be empowered by the challenges they face, not paralyzed. The more we can help them grow in resiliency, the more we are supporting the health and well-being of future generations. We want our kids to know how to bounce back. We never know when another experience similar to the pandemic will occur, but we want to and raise others to rise above the challenge and come out stronger on the other side!